


After

by ArchetypeOfAdespota



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Cilantro, Crossdressing, Darwinism, Deacon's Random Dialogue is a Goldmine, Desdemona has no situational awareness, Explosions, F/M, Humor, Inadvisable Teleportation, Molerat Mutilation, Sass, Vignettes, heights
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-05-03 12:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5290391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchetypeOfAdespota/pseuds/ArchetypeOfAdespota
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It may not be perfect, but before, after, and everything in between still has to happen. </p><p>Or: How Valerie and Deacon never took anything seriously and still managed to become superheroes, fall in love, argue about cilantro, and save the world. </p><p>Oh, and theres no plot, its just drabbles and vignettes, so don't let the incomplete marker concern you. Any chapter can be taken on its own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Now, Let's unravel your theory completely

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter will be based on a prompt from here:  
> http://writelively.tumblr.com/post/127774021571/40-more-writing-prompts

"Wait, wait. Don't tell me, I want to guess." 

Deacon sinks down into the patio chair pulled up next to the firepit, absentmindedly twirling the machete in his hand. Valerie rolls her eyes and drops the freshly skinned molerat in her hand onto the chopping block in front of him. 

"Whatever you think I used to be, I guarantee you will never guess." she says firmly. Deacon brings the machete down on the neck with a wet thwack, and she skitters back with an indignant squeal, turning aside too late to avoid the spray of blood across her arm. 

"Now see, that just sound like a challenge to me. You think I don't have your number by now missy?" Deacons smirk is nothing less than impish as Valerie swipes the blood from her arm and flicks it at him with glare. "You obviously had firearms training, recon, tactics, any number of things. You're good, but not good enough to pick all this up in just the last year. I've seen lifelong mercenaries that don't have half the skills you do, never mind the chops to use them." 

He sections off bits of meat as he talks, pitching them into the stewpot over the fire. Valerie crosses the weed choked yard to the second patio chair inexplicably stuck halfway up the overgrown hedge, and heaves it free. She lugs it to the opposite side of the fire from the molerat mutilation, leaning down to grab a rag and her railway rifle from her pack before settling in to clean it. 

"Alright then. Amaze me with your insight and carefully crafted theories, Tinker Tom." She snickers at the sour look he throws her, holding his gaze with a too innocent smile until he rolls his eyes and turns back to dinner. 

"So, after careful consideration of all facts, I've narrowed it down to Soviet sleeper agent, American super spy, or Master Vigilante Assassin. I know, you never thought I'd guess, please contain your shock until you've told me which it is. No- hey, stop that! I'm serious!"

Valerie laughs so hard she has to clutch the arm of her chair to stay upright and seated, bent double as she clutches at her stomach. Deacon purses his lips and sets the machete down. 

"Really Val, you're hurting my feelings here. I worked hard on these theories. Lots of sleepless nights. You're just being mean now." He crosses his arms. Valerie's laughter degenerates into unattractive snorting hiccoughs. 

"Im - snrk - I'm sorry, I just-" she manages to meet his eyes long enough to peal off again at his indignant frown. This time she really does slide out of her chair. Deacon throws a molerat rib at her. Her laughter cuts off abruptly and her eyes narrow. 

Deacon makes a valiant effort at scrambling to his feet, turning to make a dash for it just in time to be tackled onto his face with a fistful of molerat guts in his wig. 

~0~0~0~

Two hours, one ruined stew, and six buckets of river water later, they are mostly cleaned and settled in to sleep on the mattresses they've dragged to the most intact corner of the hedge. 

Deacon has begun to drift off when he hears Valerie roll over to face him.

"I was a lawyer."

His eyes snap open. There is a beat of silence. And another. 

"Officially anyway. Allegedly I held any number of fascinating and exciting jobs it would have been positively scandalous for a mild mannered housewife like myself to have."

Deacon groans and whacks her with his pillow.


	2. Not exactly proper, is it darling?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I may have had too much fun with the armored clothing the railroad gives you. Deacon really does look good in the red dress though.

Its a tiny little low cut number, fire engine red with glitter spangling every inch of the fabric so that it shimmers when the light catches it. Its the kind of dress that screams, "Please, ask me how much!" Deacon eyes it critically, one hip cocked to the side, arms akimbo as he purses his lips. 

"Val, when I said any disguise, I meant within reason." he sighs. Valerie's eyes light with triumph, shaking the dress emphatically. 

"So you admit defeat! The master has fallen. Brought low by such a simple request as dressing in drag. For shame!" she crows. Deacon rolls his eyes and stalks past her into the closet, snatching the dress from her as he goes. 

"Thats not what I meant. That dress is too low cut, and I don't have the hips for it. Honestly woman, its like you know nothing about fashion. Where's that sequined purple one with the matching wrap? The one you got in Goodneighbor when you saved that hooker?" He pulls the dress from its exile on the top shelf. "Yeah this one."

Valerie looks scandalized. "You can't use that one! I'm saving it! You'll stretch it out!" She makes a lunge for it, but Deacon holds it above his head. Valerie is reduced to jumping pathetically for it with grabby hands. 

"Nope, this one. Besides, that red one'll make me look like a woman of loose virtue. Not exactly proper. I'm not that kind of girl Val. Honestly, I'm a little offended." He hip checks her out of the way and ducks into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him before Val can make another rescue attempt on her dress. 

Valerie scrabbles at the door.   
"Deacon you give that back right now! This is NOT what I meant when I issued this challenge. Deacon. Deacon!" she whines. Her head falls against the wood with a hollow thunk. The sound of running water starts up. 

"Hey, can I borrow your razor?" Deacon calls.

"What? No!"

"I'm gonna borrow your razor."

~0~0~0~

The Dugout is really the only bar in Diamond City, so its there that they head to test Deacons disguise. Valerie fumes silently the entire walk down the stands, both at the tragic sacrifice of her best dress, and at the inexplicable skill Deacon possesses at walking in stilettos. 

Her mood improves the moment they step into the bar however. There are plenty of lonely looking drifters scattered throughout the room, and the dim lighting inside is making Deacon look rather more womanly than she had been expecting. Deacon leaves her at the door with a saucy wink and sidles up to the bar. Valerie takes a couch in a darkened corner and tries not to snicker too audibly at the wiggle the heels force into his walk. 

What follows is simultaneously the most insulting and hilarious hour of her life. Deacon has a way with Diamond City's men that she couldn't hope to emulate on her best day, and ten minutes in Deacon already has an array of drinks spread on the bar before him. Scotch from the middle aged trader on the couch, a vodka martini from the mercenary near the door, and three different cocktails from the group of twenty somethings at the bar. She watches in awe as Deacon eyes the drinks critically before selecting the martini and taking a delicate sip, red lacquered nails glinting against the crystal. He pretends not to notice as the mercenary fist bumps his friends and swaggers up to the bar.

Valerie can only watch in awe as Deacon works the poor man over like a master, pitching his voice a shade higher, running a hand down his shoulder, pressing in just that little bit closer every few minutes, twirling a strand of his curly black wig around his finger.. By the time they adjourn to one of the booths in the corner Valerie is peeking through her fingers, helpless giggles shaking her frame. 

Finally, the Merc stands and offers Deacon a gentlemanly arm up from the booth and begins to lead him towards the door. Deacon send her a questioning side eye as he walks past. With a sigh, Valerie stands and cuts them off before they reach the entryway. 

"Alright you smooth bastard, you win." she reaches into her pocket and tosses a bag of caps at his chest with a clank. 

"Finally. I thought you we're going to let me go home with poor Emmet here before you called it." Deacon chuckles, letting his voice drop back to its normal register. He pulls off his wig with a flourish. "Good thing too, this wig is so itchy." 

The damages charged for the barfight Emmet starts are completely worth watching Deacon fight in a cocktail dress.


	3. It's crucial we get this done.

"I'll let you do the honors." Desdemona gestures to the button with a flourish. Valerie is still reeling from the teleport relay, weaving slightly on her feet. Deacon is gripping the back of her shirt to keep her from pitching over the guardrail.

She tries for subtlety as she wipes away the moisture in the corners of her eyes, nodding. " _What do you mean, how are you my mother? You just are_." is still echoing in her ears as she stumbles towards the table, and she misses the utterly filthy glare Deacon levels at Desdemona as he releases her collar.

Valerie clutches at the edge of the table for a moment as she looks out over the C.I.T ruins, taking a shaky deep breath. Its beautiful, clear. Every star is visible in the night sky. She can feel the eyes of every railroad agent on the roof behind her. With trembling hands she unclips the cover and flips it back, then pauses. The button is small, and lacquered a chipped red. A shudder runs down her spine, and she sets her hand back down on the table. Desdemona clears her throat. The button blurs into a smear of scarlet before her as Valeries eyes fill with tears once more, and the roaring in her ears is blocking out every sound save her own thoughts. _Your son is in there_ , they say. _You're going to kill your baby boy_. She squeezes her eyes closed.

She feels a brush of fabric against her arm, and turns to blink up at Deacon. Without a word he reaches forward and lifts her hand off the table, twining his fingers with hers. She takes a deep breath again, steadier this time, and nods, once. Twice. Slams her fist down on the button.

The night sky lights up. Valerie turns away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really did find it kind of a dick move when Des made you press that button. Not cool Des.


	4. A Bit of Fuel for Thought.

The feral ghoul falls with a gurgling cry just shy of Deacons boots, cartoon style, where he lurks in the shadow of what used to be the canned goods shelving. He wrinkles his nose across the aisle at Valerie and sidles back from the rapidly spreading pool of blood encroaching on the dusty leather. She only spares time to throw him a sheepish smile before turning back to level _Deliverer_ at the fresh waves of ghouls charging down the produce section.

Deacon glances behind them and jumps, turns smoothly to put a slug between the eyes of a particularly sneaky feral that had nearly made a grab at Valerie.  
"Ah, ah buddy, that's my trick." he quips. "Hey Val, while we're here we should pick up the shopping. You know, bread, eggs, cilantro. You can never have enough cilantro." 

Valerie caps the last of the ghouls in sight and huffs a quiet laugh. She slides around the shelf quietly, crouched low, and sweeps the rest of the room out of Deacons sight for more ghouls before standing up. She dusts off her leathers and trots off towards the pharmacy at the back of the store. 

"If it's cilantro you're after," she calls over her shoulder, "You're carrying, cooking, and eating it yourself. That shit's nasty." She hops the counter to the pharmacy and scans the shelves before beelining for the obviously locked cabinet in the back, pulling a bobbypin from behind her ear as she goes. Deacon looks scandalized. 

"Val, say it ain't so! All these dreams of the halcyon days of well stocked spice racks, and you're telling me they weren't even good? Because I spent three days holed up in an old bistro after a bad job once, and there was nothing to do but read cookbooks. I have _plans_ Val. _Goals_. And a lot of those recipes needed cilantro. If I ever find some, I told myself, I'm gonna make one hell of a quiche. And now all those dreams are shattered. _Lost_." 

Valerie pops the lock and turns back to him with a fistful of RadX and an unreadable expression. 

"You've never had cilantro?" she blinks.

"You think I've got a spice garden hidden under this stylish hat?" Deacon shrugs. "Not exactly a lot of herbs and spices left in the wasteland. Not a top priority on the cultural preservation list. Right below 'holotape containing more than ten songs' on the list of stuff to grab when the bombs are falling."

Valerie looks stricken. "So there's no more cinnamon? Cloves? Chives? Thyme? Basil?" She looks genuinely upset, the hard won riches of the SuperDuper Mart lying completely forgotten around her. 

Deacon shakes his head with the air of a man delivering truly devastating news. "Not a bit, to my knowledge. Although apparently the cilantro isn't a great loss, so there's that." He waves his hand in a ' _what can you do?_ ' sort of way.

Valerie clasps one fist over her heart dramatically, raising the other to gesture animatedly. "I'm gonna find you some cilantro Deacon. On my honor as a compulsive looter, I will find you all the shitty garnish you want. It's so terrible you have to try it yourself. Seriously. They used to put it on everything and you had to pick it off and it was the absolute worst. And you would totally be one of the weird people who actually eats it." she looks so aggrieved he can't help feel bad for her. 

It isn't often that Deacon even remembers Valerie is pre-war. From all that he's seen, and the bits and pieces he's picked up from Valentine, Valerie had bounced out of the vault, hit the ground running, and taken to the wasteland like a duck to water. Ghouls, synths, mutants, raiders, she'd taken it all in stride, too singleminded in her pursuit of her son, and later in the cause she'd found in the Railroad, to slow down and worry about it. ' _If it talks, I figure it's people._ ' she had told him once, ' _And if it doesn't it usually wants to eat me._ ' 

Hard not to take a woman like that at face value.

Now though, watching her work herself into a state of genuine upset over his not having tasted a particular kind of leaf, its impossible to ignore where she's come from and all she's lost. He smiles and grabs her wrist before she can smack herself in the face in her vigor. 

"Sure Val. And maybe while we're at it we can find you some of that coffee you're always going on about in the morning. It's gotta be out there." he soothes. Valerie's distraught expression melts away int one of wistful longing. 

"Yeah." She coos. "Coffee..."

Deacon gives her his best shit-eating grin.

"And if not, hey. I'm pretty sure you'll make the stuff show up through sheer force of will."

He's only half kidding.


	5. I regret to inform you that...

So, this is the third time today Valerie has put her foot through a Mirelurk egg, and that is quite enough of that.

"Nope, that's enough. I don't care. No. Nuh-uh. Pam can find her own damned military cache, this is bullshit!" she spits, stumbling to a dryish patch of floor and furiously scraping her boot off on a jut of broken concrete, leaving streaks of gray green slime behind. As she hops backwards, shaking her leg to rid herself of the bits of shattered shell clinging to her pant leg she slips on another clump of... whatever horrid slimy substance the overgrown lobsters build their nest out of. With a squeal she tumbles backwards into Deacon, who nearly drops his pistol catching her. 

"I dunno Val, I'm having a blast catching myself some swooning damsels. The angry giant crabs and the swamp in my socks are just gravy." he deadpans. Valerie glares at him, though the effect is somewhat diminished by her being plastered against him like they're on the cover of a harlequin novel. She shoves him away with a snort and returns to shaking shell off her leathers. 

"The damsel stands by her earlier statement. Giant terrifying mutant crab monsters are not and never will be fun. They are giant. _And terrifying_." 

Deacon laughs and leaves her on her precious patch of dry ground, wading back out into the sludge. 

"I'd have paid fifty caps to be with you first time you saw one of the crabs. Must've thought you walked into a B movie." He kicks at the debris under the water, reaches down to pull a sheet of plywood out from under the seaweed. 

Valerie shudders, remembering her first encounter with the Mirelurks. 

"It wasn't pretty. There may have been a great deal of undignified squealing involved. I didn't have anything but a .10 pistol and an angry mechanic for backup." 

Deacon laughs. 

"I'm gonna want that story in full later." With a wet slap, he brings the plywood down on the broken stairwell to form a slightly slimy bridge to the next floor. He gestures to it with a flourishing bow. "Your chariot to safety, my fair damsel." Valerie scrambles up gratefully. She throws open the door to the next room and levels her combat rifle at the entry, as Deacon follows and sweeps the rest of the hall. When the room seems to yield nothing with murderous intent, she drags him inside and slams the door, flopping down on a battered couch. 

"Break time" she declares. "My boots are forming tiny seas." She yanks a boot off and tips it over, glowering at the stream of water that pours out. Deacon laughs and takes the seat next to her, bending to unlace his own boots. 

"What I don't understand," Valerie says after a moment, "Is where the Mirelurks even came from. They're just crabs right? When I was a kid they were itty bitty little things. I could fit one in the palm of my hand. For fucks sake, we used to catch them in the tide pools for fun in the summers, when we went to the beach! How could they have mutated into a giant monstrous hive society, with- with _kings_ and soldiers and queens and shit?!"

Deacon turns to her, looking stunned. 

"No one told you?" 

Valerie blinks, her rant derailed. 

"Told me what?"

Deacon sets his boots aside on the coffee table and settles back into the couch. He laces his hands behind his head and stares at the ceiling. 

"Hoo boy, where to start." he muses. "Well, for beginnings they're not mutant crabs. They're crab _people._ " 

Valerie looks aghast. She turns bodily on the couch, crossing her legs beneath her and leaning forwards toward him. 

" _No way._ " 

Deacon nods sagely, gaze still fixed on the peeling plaster of the roof. 

" _Yeah_ way. They've been here all along and we didn't know until after the bombs fell. They showed up after. I guess they were mad about the whole, 'deadly radioactive sea' thing? They had this whole undersea society. Kings, Queens, softshells, razorclaws. They had cities and junk. Came up here to wage war on us for ruining everything. Its been this ongoing battle for two hundred years now." 

Valerie's eyes are round as saucers when he finally turns to look at her, gazing at him like everything she knows is a lie. He tries, he really does, schooling his features into the most serious expression he can manage. He does his best serious nod to go with it. Valerie blinks. 

"Wait a minute." Her eyes narrow. "That's your lying face."

Deacon looks wounded. 

"Val, no. I'm your partner. I would never dream of lying to you about something this serious!" he protests.

"Oh don't you feed me that crock you ass, that is one hundred percent your 'No really Val, Im the real founder of the railroad' face!" She throws her shoe at him. "I should know, it's very similar to your 'I'm a synth, here's my recall code' face!" 

Deacon bats the projectile aside and finally cracks, breaking into a grin. 

"I had you going there for a minute though didn't I? Crab people, that was one of my best." he chuckles. 

Valerie growls and shoves him off the couch with her foot. Deacon yelps and takes her with him. It degenerates into an ungainly wrestling match squished between the sofa and the coffee table, which ends with Deacon casually perched on her back, reclining against the couch while she squirms fruitlessly. She gives up with a huff, cheek squished uncomfortably against the linoleum. 

"It totally could have been true." she whines, "Thats not even half as weird as some of the crap out here." 

Deacon chuckles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You cannot rightfully convince me that crabs could mutate that much in 200 years. Bethesda sits on a throne of lies.


	6. Ignore me, I don’t know anything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, joining the railroad. That whole scene was such an exercise in stupidity. Like, I had Valentine RIGHT THERE. I think I'm cool with synths guys.

"I'm just saying Des," Deacon wheedles, "If we helped _humans_ now and then, maybe we wouldn't seem like such loonies when we try and tell people we're on their side." Desdemona rolls her eyes. 

"And I've told you before, we don't have the resources to-"

 _"Shh! She's here!"_

Drummer Boy's hiss cuts through the quiet hum of conversation in the entry chamber. Glory scrambles herself to standing in the corner, and Drummer Boy falls back to lean against the wall behind Desdemona and Deacon. The room echoes with silence for a brief moment before the rest of them hear it. 

"-just saying Nick, maybe the bright red line through the greater part of Boston isn't the great stroke of subtlety they think it is." 

The voice is clear through the listening holes drilled near-invisibly along the line of the ceiling, low but feminine, and crackling with dry humor. Deacon can pick it out of a busy market crowd by now, his weeks of casual stalking making him far more familiar with her than she'll likely be comfortable with. 

"Well, no reason you can't mention that to them. I'm sure poking holes in their security is a great way to earn their trust." A man this time. Nick Valentine, the synth she'd been keeping company with nearly every time Deacon had tailed her. Deacon shifts a bit closer to the wall to hear better. 

Crunching footsteps echo down the outer hall, towards them, slow, stop. They're right outside the door now. There's an unreadable pause.

". . . So, I'm going to guess that's it." she deadpans. "They do realize anyone could walk down here right? You think someone isn't going to wonder why a Freedom Trail plate with wires coming out of it is stuck in the wall here?"

There's a _tink tink sound_ , a fingernail tapping against metal. Deacon can _hear_ Desdemona's teeth grind together behind him.

"Just give me those numbers you scribbled down sweetheart." Valentine laughs. "You can state the obvious to them later." 

Theres a rustling noise, and a pause. 

"The passwords 'Railroad.'" he says finally. There's another, longer pause.

"You're _shitting_ me. _Oh my god._ I don't know if I can work for these people Nick. I already feel unsafe." 

Deacon steps back when he hears the lockplate outside start rotating, very carefully schooling the smirk off his face. Desdemona levels a glare at him anyway. He can see Glory's shoulders shaking with silent laughter. Drummer Boy has a hand over his eyes, gently banging the back of his head against the wall as he fights a grin.

They snap themselves into composure when the false wall swings out. No amount of humor at their bosses expense is worth the risk of her wrath. 

The meeting actually goes fairly smoothly up to a point, Deacon keeping his mouth shut, as Desdemona had insisted. He snickers a bit though, when she chooses her codename. The "Charmer" monicker is a double edged meaning the rest of them don't quite grasp yet. He does notice Valentines lips twist into a flicker of a smile though.

When Desdemona asks her final question though, Deacon really has to question the Railroads choice of leadership. 

"Will you risk your life for your fellow man, regardless of whether or not they may be a synth?"

Charmer blinks at her, her amiable demeanor shifting into something more closely resembling one dealing with someone of low intelligence. She turns to her companion. 

"Well gosh, I dunno. Hey Nick, do you think I can?" she drawls. Valentine chuckles, the corners of his glowing yellow eyes crinkling with mirth. 

"Remind me how we met again?" he asks innocently.

"Pretty sure I blasted my way through Skinny Malone's entire crew to bust your damsel ass out of a jail cell."

"Ah yes, how could I forget?"

Desdemona looks as though she's seriously reconsidering the newest member of their happy little family. Deacon can not wait to see this girl work.


	7. Hustle people, we don't have time!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey it's something to do with their actual relationship. Where did this come from?

The Relay crackles with energy, hums with power. Valerie stares up at it, eyes wide as saucers, not bothering to hide the naked terror on her face. She twists to look at Tinker Tom at his control panel across the yard, muttering to himself. His face is manic, his eyes darting from screen to screen, and occasionally he pauses to twist a wire under the cover or smack the generator behind him with a hammer. 

"This is going to kill me." she says matter of factly. "Tom is gonna scatter my atoms to the farthest corners of the globe, and no one will ever know what happened." her chipper tone slides towards genuine fear at the end, and Deacon claps her on the shoulder. 

"I... have no reassurances to offer." he muses. "There is no way that's up to code."

Desdemona scoffs. 

"You gathered the materials yourselves, and Tinker Tom spent three months just on the schematics. We've been building it for nearly a year. Its as safe as we can possibly make it." her words are clearly meant to be reassuring, but Valerie can't help but notice the obvious lack of guarantee behind them. Valerie takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment. 

"I'm sure its fine. Totally fine. Tom wouldn't mess up something this important." she says finally. Desdemona beams approvingly at her.

"Excellent." she turns and begins striding towards the guard tower on the corner of the base. Deacon and Valerie follow her more slowly, Valerie pausing every few steps to glance with trepidation back at the relay. 

~0~0~0~

The meeting is brief, her instructions simple and clear. She tucks the holotape into her jackets inner pocket, reassures Desdemona as best she can that she will look for patriot, not just her son. And then Desdemona leaves her to prepare, gesturing to the supply shelves stacked against the walls and motioning Deacon to follow her out. Valerie's stomach gives a nervous flip at the thought of being alone, but he just snorts and flops back onto a tatty desk chair and kicks his legs up onto the table. Desdemona gives an irritated scowl, but leaves without another word. 

Valerie turns quietly back to the shelving, emptying her pockets onto the table and unholstering _Deliverer_ from its place on her thigh. Her sniper rifle is set carefully onto its side in front of Deacon. He pulls it towards him and starts breaking it down. 

"Soooo." Deacon breaks the silence. "Your big damn hero moment is finally here." Valerie huffs a laugh, and he catches her eye briefly before she twists to stuff a half dozen stimpacks into the padded pocket at her waist. 

"Big damn hero moment. I like it. Bust in, smooth talk my way into an internship. Find Patriot, find Shaun. Ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after." she gestures dramatically with a box of .308 ammunition. "Storybook."

Deacon chuckles. Valerie pauses a moment to watch him work, his hands moving practiced and smooth over the rifle. He finishes and sets it aside as she watches, holds his hand out, waggles his fingers at her. 

"Baby too." 

She hands over _Deliverer_ and sits down across from him to load clips. Deacon pauses a moment and studies her. 

"So, on a scale from one to 'popping a stealth boy and running for the hills', how terrified are you?" he questions. Valerie's hands still on the ammunition for the barest heartbeat before she looks up and flicks a bullet at him. 

"Probably an eight," she retorts, "And at least half of that is just the relay." Deacon catches it and rolls it back across the table towards her. 

"Only half?" he jokes, "What could there _possibly_ be in boogyman central worse than Tinker Tom playing cats cradle with your molecules?" Valerie bites her lip. 

"A lot."

Deacon halts what he's doing and leans over the table to grab one of her hands. She starts and looks up at him, and yeah, he's not a fool. He can see the fears stacked behind her eyes as she contemplates everything that could go wrong, every scenario leading to her worst nightmares. He squeezes her hand tightly.

"You're gonna find him. Alive and rosy-cheeked and all that jazz, and you're gonna bring him home to Sanctuary and be sickeningly domestic and leave me to deal with Desdemona all by my lonesome back at HQ." 

Valeries eyes swim with tears for a moment, before she blinks them back and nods. She manages a smile as Deacon picks _Deliverer_ up again, beginning to slot it back together.

"What, you're not gonna come visit? I'm sure you'll be unfairly good with him, and turn him against me. Convince him vegetables are a conspiracy and snack cakes are a superfood."

"Oh hell yeah. I'll be awesome Uncle Deacon. He'll totally love me best." Deacon smiles. A shadow falls over Valerie's eyes though, and he freezes. "Val..."

"Hmm?" her tone is innocent, forcedly light, and he feels his chest constrict painfully. She stands and drops the loaded clips into their respective pouches and pockets, takes _Deliverer_ from his unresisting hand, slings her sniper rifle over her shoulder.

"I think that about does it." she turns for the door. Deacon is suddenly very aware of his heartbeat, the room, the space between them. The fact that, for all they've made light of it, she's about to walk into a suicide mission. 

He doesn't say anything.

He stands, follows her outside and down the steps, across the yard. He watches her nod her readiness Desdemona, tighten the strap on her rifle. He swallows as she approaches him again, accepts the hug she gives him. And whens she tries to pull back, he catches her hand.

She halts and turns back to look at him. 

"Deacon?"

He glances over her shoulder at Desdemona and Tom, bent over the control bench with their back towards them, and then back to Valerie. She's looking at him in confusion, expression guarded. His throat works for a moment, unused to words that aren't sarcasm or lies, before he clears it with a cough. 

"So, it has very suddenly occurred to me that you're walking into a death trap, and this is one of those do or die kind of moments like in the movies, and I think this is the point where I'm supposed to tell you now in case you die and I'd have to add another sob story to my tragic memoirs, and I'd really rather not have people read that I was a coward and just let you walk off like this." The words, when they come, tumble out in a floodgate of embarrassing truth and awkward stuttering. Valerie's expression morphs from confusion to realization to a blank, careful mask that halts his tongue and makes him fidget awkwardly as he struggles for the rest of what he wants to say. 

"So... I mean- I know I've been an ass about this, and I didn't want to- I mean, I didn't think it was a good idea. It's still an incredibly terrible idea actually, but now I- I can't just let it go. Because that would be..." He sighs, runs his free hand through his wig. "Are you seriously going to let me stammer through this without saying anything?"

She looks at him, and oh, no. He's pretty sure thats what hope looks like. He is a terrible human being.

"You're not..." She starts. "Are you saying...?"

And _wow_ , they are both really terrible at this. This entire conversation desperately needs to be circumvented somehow. 

"Yeah." he manages, "I am." And then he kisses her, which he'll realize later would probably have been a much better way to start the conversation, but for now he's a bit caught up on thinking that he probably should have done this ages ago, because _wow._ He doesn't know if its the actual impending doom thing or what, but she kisses like he's keeping her alive, and thats _awesome_. And then he doesn't think much at all for a minute. 

"Ahem." 

They break apart with a jump and an embarrassing wet noise that Deacon is definitely going to omit from this memory in the future. Desdemona stands there sternly, arms crossed, with Tinker Tom doing his best impression of a wallflower behind her. There's an awkward, loaded pause as they're given a once over. Finally, Desdemona gives them an inscrutable look, before rolling her eyes and gesturing towards the Relay pad. And hey, maybe he's imagining it, but her voice is a bit softer than normal when she speaks.

"If you two are finished, its time." 

Valerie looks at him sulkily, but, steps back, with a last squeeze to his hand before she releases him. She looks up at the Relay, takes a deep breath, steps up onto the pad. She shoots him a smile and a wink before meeting the eyes of everyone there. 

"Be back in a flash. An hour tops." she waves a hand loosely, her silhouette growing stark as the flashes around the Relay begin to pulse faster.

Even Desdemona cracks a smile at the bravado. 

"Take her away Tom." She commands. 

In a blinding flash of light, Valerie is gone.


	8. After the incident I secluded myself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god more relationship development. And three chapters in one day! Clearly the sky is falling. Madness is over taking the realm. Or maybe my morning class got cancelled and ya'll are reaping the benefits.
> 
> Side note: I'm eight chapters in and it looks like this story is going to be a _thing_ for awhile. If any of you know someone looking to be a beta, this trainwreck sure could use one. Shoot me a message.

He smiles at her, kind and soft. Her hand is pressed between the two of his, and the alien feeling of it nearly chokes her, the skin dry and wrinkling against hers. Too old, too foreign. 

"Take care Mother. Take all the time you need to think about what I said. I will be waiting when you're ready." 

He releases her, and she steps back, smiles back at him. The expression feels so fake to her, but he seems pleased. She keys in the coordinates for the Old North Church as quickly as she dares, waves goodbye, feels her atoms crumble away under the beam of the relay. 

Valerie rematerializes in the center of the Railroad Headquarters with a gasp and falls to a knee before she can find her center of gravity. Dimly she hears chaos around her, a shattering glass, a chair tipping over, Drummer Boy's shout of _'Desdemona! Charmer's back!'_ She keeps her head down until she's certain her inner ear was actually put back in the right place.

Finally she raises her head, blinking to clear the film over her vision that seems to accompany the relay. Drummer Boy is crouched before her, peering at her with poorly disguised concern.  
He offers her a hand up. 

"You alright Charmer?" his voice is cautious, gentle. She smiles weakly. She must look beyond rough if the man who thinks a mirelurk nest is an acceptable dead drop is concerned about her. She takes his hand and lets him help her to her feet. Behind her, she hears a door bang open against a wall. 

"Charmer!" Desdemona barks. The small crowd of nameless tourists clustered around the fringes of Valerie's vision scatter like a school of startled fish as Desdemona strides towards her, leaving only Glory and Drummer Boy standing at her back. Des halts a few feet away from her, scanning her head to toe with a critical eye. She purses her lips.

"You were successful then." She gives an approving nod. "Come on, to PAMs room. I want to hear everything." She turns away towards the back room, obviously expecting no argument. 

Valerie hesitates. The thought of doing anything but finding a quiet corner to curl up and cry in makes her knees weak, and she casts her eyes about the room for any possibility of escape. Her eyes fall on the blackboard in the corner, listing the names of the agents and safehouses. Her name has a thick white slash down the center. Her eyes widen. A pained choking sound tears itself from her throat without her permission. 

Glory follows her gaze, flinches. 

"Oh. That." her tone is beyond apologetic, and she squeezes Valerie's shoulder with a heavy sigh. "After day four, Des figured... Well. It'd been four days. She made us leave Mercer after the first two. The rest of us weren't so sure of course. I've never seen Deacon so pissed. He tried to hide the chalk." 

Valerie feels the beginnings of tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

"Charmer!" Desdemona calls, "I'm sure you're tired, but this debrief can't wait. We-"

"Actually I'm pretty sure it can." 

Desdemona balks as Deacon materializes at Valerie's shoulder, the stealth boy strapped to his wrist flickering. 

"Honestly Des, there's a little thing called situational awareness I really think we need to have a talk about." Theres an edge to his voice usually reserved for synth haters and people pointing a gun at him. He slings an arm around Valerie, turning to scrutinize her. He clearly doesn't like what he finds, and his eyes narrow. 

"How you doing Charmer?" he asks gently. Valerie tries and fails to resist the urge to tuck herself closer into his side, pressing in against him and turning her face away from Desdemona. 

"I've have better weeks." she mumbles. Deacons arm around her tightens.  
"That's what I thought." he says. He directs his attention back to Des. "So, there you have it. Charmer will be taking a slight reprieve for the evening. I'd say she's earned it, what with the whole just having spent a week in enemy territory thing." his voice is dripping with false levity, and Valerie hears Glory snort behind them. Desdemona looks furious. 

"We _discussed_ this Deacon!" her tone suggests the discussion had not been amicable. "After I debrief her you can do as you-" 

"AND thats all the time we have for you today. Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion folks!" Deacon cuts her off. In one motion he slaps a stealth boy onto Valerie's wrist and thumbs it on, then reactivates his own and grabs her hand tightly as they shimmer out of existence. 

The room breaks into bedlam, Desdemona's enraged squawk of _'Stop them!'_ nearly drowned out by Drummer Boy's laughter and Glory's _whoop!_ of delighted support. Tinker Tom, before now having been content to stand at his work station and eavesdrop, snatches off his goggles and throws them down on the counter in exasperation. 

"Deacon, man, come on! The gadget closet is for Ops supply! Now I gotta make more stealth boys!" he complains. 

At her side, Valerie hears Deacon chuckle. In the chaos they slip off deeper into the catacombs.

 

~0~0~0~

 

Valerie isn't remotely surprised that Deacon has a bolt hole in the catacombs, deeper in than any of the other railroaders ever venture. He leads her unerringly through the narrow twists and turns and echoing, cavernous rooms filled with stone coffins. They stop only for a moment to switch off their stealth boys and light her pipboy against the darkness when the echoes of Desdemona's hissy fit fades into silence behind them. They don't speak, and he doesn't let go of her hand.

Finally, he halts at a crumbling wall with a coffin lid leaning against it at a precarious angle. The room is filled with smashed masonry, and looks for all the world like an empty dead end. She smiles knowingly when he pulls her beneath the lid and through the wall into what must have been a sealed chamber pre war. 

The inside, aside from the single covered tomb against the far wall, is surprisingly cozy by commonwealth standards. There's a mattress made up in the corner, a camp stove set up near a wire shelf stacked with non perishable food, and a chair and table, with a lantern sat atop it. There's also a small pile of expended stealth boys in the corner near the door. He releases her hand to light the lantern, and she stands awkwardly near the doorway, arms wrapped around herself as though she doesn't know what to do with her hands anymore. 

Deacon turns back to her after the warm glow of the lantern has filled the room.

"Hey, make yourself at home." He smiles. " _Mi casa_ is _su casa_." He gestures towards the mattress, and she sits obediently on the edge, pulling her legs to her chest and wrapping her arms around them tightly. Deacon looks at her, then removes his wig and sunglasses, tossing them onto the table and running his hand over his scalp.

"I'd been saving this for a special occasion, but in light of current events I think we can make an exception." he says ruefully. "You can't say this scenario isn't at least _unique_.'

Valerie snorts something resembling a laugh. Deacon looks relieved.

He lowers himself to the floor by the camp stove and digs out a kettle, filling it with water and setting it to boil before turning back to the shelves and rummaging around. Valerie watches curiously as he sets out two mugs, a spoon, and- 

"Is that hot chocolate?!" 

Deacon waggles the little white packets proudly and beams. 

"With mini marshmallows." 

Valerie unfolds herself and scoots off the mattress with a _thump_ to sit across from him, leaning forward eagerly.

"I haven't even _seen_ any since I woke up." she says with wistful awe.

"That's because there basically isn't any." Deacon rips the top off the packets and carefully pours them into the mugs. "Trust me, you don't want to know what I had to do to get these." 

Valerie shoots him a curious look.

"No seriously, don't ask." his tone doesn't leave any room for questioning, and Valerie goes back to watching him pour the hot water in and stir the mix. When he finally hands her the steaming mug she takes it greedily, breathing in the scent of cheap cocoa and stale marshmallows with relish. The first sip is beyond heaven, and she almost forgets the last week in the rush of nostalgia and comfort that comes with the taste. She her eyes flutter closed in bliss, and she hears Deacon chuckle at her. 

"Worth it." 

She opens her eyes and smiles at him. Deacon returns it, and they sit a moment in comfortable silence. Valerie finally lets herself _be_ for the first time in a week. 

When her mug is half empty a few minutes later she lets it settle into her lap, hands cupped around the warmth, and eyes half lidded. She startles a bit though, when Deacon gets to his feet, setting his empty mug on the table as he walks by, and sits down on the bed beside her. He looks at her, starts to say something, pauses, stops. She stiffens and turns away. She doesn't know how he's going to ask, what he'll say, but she knows he want to know what was inside the institute, what she'd seen. She'd rather tell him first. Maybe this way she can get her head on straight before she has to look Desdemona in the eye again. 

She sets her cup on the floor by her feet and and folds her hands in her lap, while Deacon fidgets by her side. 

"So..." he begins. She forces herself to raise her head, to meet his eyes, but he still isn't looking at her. "About what I said at Mercer." 

Valerie gapes. All fears of talking about the institute are banished in a trice as her delicate hold on her emotions snaps. Deacon opens his mouth to continue, but she cuts him off with a snarl.

"You're fucking joking." she spits. Deacon reels back to look at her, his face a near comical picture of shock. "I thought it was 'Sorry for your week of emotional trauma' hot chocolate, not 'I regret my poor impulse control and now I'm letting you down easy' hot chocolate you rotten son of a bitch!" Deacon looks stricken. 

"Whoa whoa whoa hang on, that's not what I-"

"I don't even know what I expected. Months and months of keeping my mouth shut and getting over it only to have you change your mind just like that, right before my big damn hero charge into the institute. Everything in there was a walking nightmare, so why would this be any different. This story needs _drama_!" Valerie gives a bitter, mocking laugh, edged with more than a little hysteria, and leaps to her feet to loom down over him. "It was the adrenaline talking right? Your overdeveloped sense of theatrics got caught up in the moment? You said you weren't- you said you couldn't-" 

"Val hang on-" 

"You said that _you couldn't let yourself_. Thats what you said. And then you had to turn around and give me hope and I believed you like a fucking moron because I thought you weren't going to lie to me anymore! Not about the important stuff! Not after-"

" _Valerie!_ " Deacon cuts her off. He leaps to his feet, grabs her by the wrist as she takes a swing at him, and wraps his arms around her, pulls her tightly against him. She goes very still, all at once, and the sudden silence is even more jarring than the hysteria. He pulls back, slowly, and raises a hand to the side of her face. His thumb traces her cheekbone, right below the shimmering line of angry tears threatening to spill over. 

"If you would care to let me finish, I had a whole sentence to go with what was clearly a poorly worded opener." he says carefully. Valerie stays perfectly still, breath shallow, still red with rage, but the accusation begins to bleed from her eyes. "I was going to say, that since a weeks gone by and I still don't regret it, maybe you could forgive me being an asshat for the last couple months and we could give this a go?" She blinks at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, before all of the tension bleeds out of her at once. 

"Oh."

And then the damn breaks. 

She throws herself at him with a quiet whimper, and he has just enough to stumble them back down to a sitting position on the mattress before she breaks down sobbing into his shoulder. 

It isn't pretty, and Deacon has to sacrifice a spare T-shirt to the cause when she starts to soak through the one he's wearing, but Valerie manages to cry herself out, curled up in his lap with his back against the wall. There are a few false stops, especially when she tries to stumble her way though an apology for freaking out on him, but they manage. 

And then, when she's still in that phantom calm state that comes after a good cry, she tells him everything. He tries to stop her, saying he can hear it with Desdemona so that she doesn't have to say it twice, but Valerie just shakes her head. 

"Some of this Des does _not_ get to know. But I think I'll explode if I don't tell someone."

And so she tells him, start to finish, everything she's seen and heard inside the Institute, from the child facsimile of ten year old Shaun crying and calling for help at the sight of her, to her meticulous inspection of every inch of the facility. Her voice starts to break once, when she's recounting Fathers explanation of letting her out of cryosleep. How he had figured she'd die out there in the 'Wealth, how _fascinating_ he'd found her determination to find him. Deacon doesn't say a word, just slips his fingers into her hair and starts carding through the short black strands soothingly. 

 

Deacon listens silently the whole way through, and for once in his life isn't even tempted to crack a joke or try to lighten the situation. When she's finished and starts to shake with tears again, he just lets her. And after she drops off to sleep against him, he lays her out properly on the bed, stretches out next to her and pulls her close again.


	9. We’ll get through this, I promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, for anyone who's gone railroad for the end quests, or dragged Deacon to some of the loftier areas of the commonwealth, you know exactly where this chapter came from. I ain't even sorry.

Deacon reaches over the table to fiddle with the tuner dial on the pipboy, though the signal seems to be coming in loud and clear. 

"Wow." he says when his meddling fails to make the voice resolve itself into something less ridiculous. "So _that's_ a trap. Really, I'm embarrassed for them. Great diction though, for a raider."

The distress call starts back up again on its endless loop, and Valerie smacks his hand away so she can shut it off. 

"See, I don't think it is." she muses. Deacon raises an eyebrow at her. "No seriously. What kind of raider has classical vocal training? I think this is too unbelievable _not_ to be real."

Deacon grumbles and flops back in his chair, dragging a hand down his face. 

"You want to go take a look don't you? Oh god, you do." he groans. Valerie turns on the puppy dog eyes before he has a chance to look away, and he can _almost_ feel his protests fade away. She leans forward onto her elbows, hands tucked under her chin, and adds a bit of lip quiver to the routine. For anything else, it would be enough to convince him. He's a sucker for the sad eyes, and she knows it. For this though? No sale. 

"Not a chance Val. Nice try though, nine out of ten. Your technique could still use some work though." 

Valerie's carefully arranged features melt into an expression of genuine puzzlement. 

"Okay, what gives? Normally you'd be totally down for rescuing inexplicably well trained damsels from mutants." 

"Didn't we have a care package to deliver anyway?" Deacon deflects. "And Valentine asked us to swing by Diamond City and help him on a case. And I'm sure Boy Scout has a milk run or six to send you on for the Minutemen. There are _tons_ of better uses for our time than walking into an ambush, c'mon." 

Valerie crosses her arms with a sigh of irritation, holding his gaze steadily until he breaks the stare to glance nervously around the abandoned apartment block du jour. 

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much." she says finally. Deacon looks back at her before letting his head hit the table, the chipped formica making a dull _thunk_ under his skull.

"Val." his voiced is muffled against the tabletop. "Trinity Tower is the tallest building in Boston."

Valerie stares down at the back of his head for a moment before it clicks. 

"Oh my god. You don't want to rescue the poor man because its too _high?_ " she breaks down into helpless giggles.

Deacon rolls his head to the side just far enough to turn one balefull eye on her. 

"You know the best part of this relationship thing? The unconditional love and support."

Valerie smiles sweetly at him. He feels his stomach flip flop in warning as she primes the deathblow in this short-lived argument. 

"I suppose I could pop into Goodneighbor and get Hancock to help out. He's been getting antsy again lately." she says innocently, _oh_ she is the worst. Deacon sits up with a scowl.

"You are _not_ storming a tower full of angry supermutants and who knows what with the Good King Jet Junkie!" he growls before he can think better of it.

Valerie grins triumphantly.

~0~0~0~

Deacon looks up at Trinity Tower. He can feel the muscles in his neck protesting at the angle his spine is craned back to, feel the muscles in his back twist themselves into knots even as he stands there. He looks down at the patch of tarmac below his feet and swallows as he tries not to think about the likelihood of it containing his splattered corpse twenty minutes from now. 

Valerie, at his side, studies him with concern. She can see the tense set of his shoulders and the white knuckled clutch on the grip of his pistol. The entire trip through the fens he had alternated wildly between stony anticipatory silence and slightly hysterical jokes. Both had been awful, and yeah, she's feeling like a terrible human being as she watches him stare up at the tower like he expects it to collapse on top of him. She realizes suddenly how horribly unfair it is to ask this of him.

"Deacon?" She tries. "If you want to go back-"

"If that thing collapses under my feet and I die a horrible squishy death on the pavement, I'm gonna haunt your ass." he cuts her off and stalks ahead of her into the building. 

Valerie huffs a laugh and follows. 

"I don't think you'd make a very good ghost though. What would you even do, steal my hats?"

Deacon looks deeply offended, and he pauses on the stairs to pin her with a stare. 

"I would be an _excellent_ ghost!" he protests. "I'll have you know that ghost spies are very in demand. Its an up and coming field."

"Desdemona will be thrilled at least. Ghosts can't _talk._ " Valerie smirks.

She manages to keep him distracted with planning his ghostly career path all the way up until floor nine, despite the supermutant leader commandeering the loudspeaker and shouting rather rude abuse at them. On nine however, they run out of elevator, and have to shimmy their way up the patchy remainders of collapsed floors. While supermutants rain fire down on their heads from the balconies above. She takes a shot in the shoulder _twice_ on floor ten, courtesy of a particularly persistent mutant, and has to cram herself under a desk while Deacon covers her. She grits her teeth against the pain as the stimpacks knit the muscle back together _around the bullets_ , which will be just a barrel of laughs to dig out later, and okay. Deacon was completely right and this was an absolutely horrendous idea.

Deacon, luckily, seems too preoccupied with not getting shot and not looking down for I-told-you-so's. 

On floor eleven, on one of the dangerously listing outer terraces, he looks down. Valerie spends floors 12-14 being treated to an audio tour of Deacons _extensive_ library of curses. It probably says something about her that she finds it endearing, despite a full half of them being directed at her. When they _finally_ climb the makeshift ramp to the roof and dispatch the ill mannered mutant awaiting them, Deacon takes one look at the breathtakingly beautiful panorama spread out around them and sinks down against the wall of Fists shack, as far from the edge as possible, to put his head between his knees. 

"Okay, you got me up here!" his overly cheerful tone is edged with hysteria, "Now grab the loony and lets go. Now!" 

Valerie squeezes his shoulder comfortingly as she goes by. 

She isn't certain what she had expected to find atop the tower really. A hapless traveling performer wasn't too far fetched. A really dramatic trader perhaps. Deacon had favored the theory of a kidnapping fetish gone too far.

This though? This beat out anything she could have imagined.

"Macbeth. You tried to teach them culture, through _Macbeth._ " she's almost too stunned for words as she stares at the man before her, clutching his little book of shakespeare to his chest as though attempting to give acting lessons to mutants was a perfectly rational thing to do. "You absolute imbecile." She is very pointedly ignoring the hulking green mass standing behind Rex like a mountainous shadow. That is way above her pay grade.

Deacon manages to raise his head with a weak chuckle. "Yeah, you philistine. Hamlet was the obvious choice here." 

Rex starts to sputter his way through a defense of his literary choices, but Valerie ignore him and turns back to Deacon.

"Deacon, I don't know if letting him out is the right thing to do here." he looks at her quizzically as choking noises emanate from the cell behind her. "I'm pretty sure this is natural selection at its finest here. It feels like I'm robbing Darwinism." Deacon snorts and pushes off the wall, coming to stand beside her. She tactfully doesn't say anything about the way he keeps his hand pressed flat against the wall as he examines Rex and his cellmate. 

"Enough talking!" the mutant suddenly spits. "Puny humans let Strong out now!"

Valerie takes an unconscious step back, instincts built over two years spent diving for cover at any voice of that timbre pinging a warning through her nervous system.

"Yeah, I don't think so big guy. I like my skull _un_ crushed, thanks." she gulps.

"Oh this is just strong!" Rex waves a hand casually. "He's harmless. Well, far from harmless actually, but he won't do you any harm. He's the only one that found any worth in what I was saying."

"Strong not crush you. Strong find milk of human kindness. Mack Beth say milk make humans strong. Strong will drink milk, become stronger than humans!"

Valerie and Deacon exchange an incredulous look before turning back to Rex. Deacon sighs and returns to leaning against the opposite wall. 

"Do it Val. I'm fairly certain this is just an adrenaline induced hallucination anyway. And if not, hey! Pet supermutant. We can call him Fido."

"Strong not pet!"

Rex claps his hands together in approval.

"Excellent! I believe Fist had the key if you care to- or I suppose that would suffice." he raises a mildly disapproving eyebrow as Valerie pulls a bobby pin from her hair and pops the lock before he finishes speaking. The cage door swings open, and Deacon rests his hand on the grip of his pistol as Strong stumps out. Valerie presses herself back against the wall by Deacon as he looms over her. The mutant makes no move towards them however, just tromps around the corner and out of sight while Rex collects his effects. 

"Elevator here." Strong calls from out of sight, and the sheer relief on Deacons face at the word 'elevator' would be comical if Valerie wasn't feeling so bad about dragging him on this whole misadventure. 

She follows Deacon and Rex around the corner to the elevator, only to run into Deacons back as he stops short. 

"Deacon?" She peers over his shoulder.

"Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I like being alive." he says shortly. He turns, walks around her, back towards the cage. Valerie stares at Strong and Rex where they wait on the rickety construction elevator, suspended from two cables off the edge of the roof and swaying in the breeze. 

"Ooh." she rubs the back of her head and shrugs apologetically. "We'll just um. We'll meet you at the bottom, alright?"

Rex looks about to protest, but Strong just shrugs and pounds a massive green fist into the elevator button, and they disappear over the edge. 

Deacon is standing at the lip of the ramp leading back down through the tower, staring glumly down into the mess of balconies and rubble when Valerie joins him. Valerie wraps an arm around his waist and presses a kiss to his cheek before popping the pin off a signal grenade and rolling it downwind across the roof. 

"Lets just skip that whole production okay?"

Deacon snorts, but cracks a smile at her as she walks them back towards the middle of the roof. 

"You did it, Val. You actually make me _glad_ at the prospect of getting on one of those hovering nightmares. Somewhere out there, there is a very confused pig soaring through the air on shiny new wings." 

Twenty minutes later, Deacon's feet are back on glorious, solid, concrete, at ground level where humans are _supposed_ to be, and Valerie has sweet talked the vertibird pilot into giving Rex a lift back to his radio station so they don't have to escort him through Boston proper. She rejoins him when she finishes make it clear, in _no uncertain terms_ , that Rex made the mutant want kindness-milk, so Strong is his problem. She leaves Rex sputtering and staring up at his new ward, and loops her arm through Deacons.

Deacon gives her a side-eye as she tugs him forwards into the Fens, but she just walks a bit faster and ducks her head.

"Okay. So." Valerie begins, as soon as they round the bend out of sight. "That was a terrible idea, and I am really, really sorry, and we can stick to lovely dark tunnels for the next week if you just stop giving me that look." Deacon adds a raised eyebrow. "Okay two weeks." A beat. "Three. You can pick where we go oh my god _pleasestoplookingatmelikethat_."

Deacon finally rolls his eyes and wraps an arm around her shoulders as they turn in the direction of Diamond City. 

"I reserve the right to give you hell about this for at _least_ the next ten years. And _everybody_ in HQ is going to know about Rex." he dictates. Valerie smiles in relief.

"Everyone is gonna think you're lying again." she laughs.

"Oh no they aren't. Because _you're_ going to tell them. Personally. With extra emphasis on how _I told you so._ "


	10. He was seduced by the possibilities.

"Oh, that is _not_ okay." Valerie spits, pulls a string of grenades out of her pack. "I don't care if Christianity died with the Pope, that is just _disrespectful._ "

The old church, _her_ old church, is swarming with raider scum. Even a mile off, she can see clearly as one of them sticks her head out of the cupola and brandishes a bottle of something at the man on guard duty, shouts something indistinct down at him. Her compatriot responds with a gesture decidedly unfit for church, then slithers around the doorframe just in time to avoid being doused in the bottles contents, laughing uproariously. Deacon can hear the squeak of enamel as Valerie grits her teeth.

"Whoa there." He grabs her collar, hauls her back to cover as she nearly tumbles down the hill trying to get a better view. "Okay, first, _you are carrying a sniper rifle, put down the grenades_ , second, it'll be dark in like, an hour. Just wait, we'll get 'em." Valerie slides down a tree, thankfully behind a shrub and out of view this time, and crosses her arms with a huff.

"Fine. But why are they even here? For what _possible_ reason?" she whines. "We're in the middle of nowhere. I should know, Nate bitched about it every time I dragged him out here for Easter Mass."

"Wait, so this was like, your actual church? Where you went to do, y'know, churchy stuff?"

Deacon flops down onto the grass beside her, and Valerie immediately slumps over to lay her head on his stomach, feeling marginally better at his surprised _oof_. She ignores the brief glare aimed at the side of her head and flicks _Deliverers_ safety off, sets it aside within reach before she answers.

"This was it. I didn't go much after highschool, but now and then my mom would lay the catholic guilt on thick enough I'd come with her." She rolls her head to the side, where the outline of the church is just visible through the low scrub they've sheltered in. "I didn't much care for Pastor Richard, the shady creep, but I always thought the church itself was so beautiful. You should've seen it, all done up for Christmas, covered in snow and twinkle lights. I haven't even _seen_ Christmas lights used for their intended purpose since I woke up." The wistful note she only gets when she talks about the past has crept into her tone, and Deacon reaches down and takes her hand, gives it a squeeze.

"Actually, we didn't go last year, but Diamond City does itself up like that every December. No snow of course, but they put up those weird plastic trees, string lights everywhere, slap a santa hat on Takahashi. We could go this time. It's only a couple months away." Valerie turns to him with that look that makes his chest go sort of squishy, the one uncomfortably close to gratitude, or adoration, or something in between. She nods vigorously. He clears his throat and turns back towards the church.

"Plus, y'know, the Bobrovs make eggnog. Well, they say it's eggnog. Personally, I think it's wise they put enough moonshine in it to disinfect whatever slime they're passing off as eggs."

Valerie barks out half a laugh before slapping a palm over her her mouth to muffle herself, but Deacon can still see the way the corners of her eyes crinkle, her shoulders briefly shaking.

"Well, now you've definitely convinced me." She smiles. "Will you dress up like Santa Claus? Bring presents to all the good little synths?"

"Oh, you won't be able to stop me. Everyone gets a puppy. Or, well. I suppose I could find some baby mole rats? I think they'd chew through the sack either way..." Deacon trails off. Valerie drums her fingers on his knee thoughtfully.

"But what do the bad kids get? There's no coal left. Uranium? Severed heads? Oh!" She snaps her fingers. " _Dead_ baby mole rats."  
Deacon looks scandalized.

"Okay, you're not allowed to pick out railroad secret Santa presents. Ever."

"What about Carringtons?"

". . . Maybe Carringtons."

 

~0~0~0~

 

Valerie stares down into the darkened tunnel, a hand on her hip.

"Now see, I don't recall my mothers church having creepy death stairs under the confessional ." She declares. Deacon snorts and brushes past her down into the basement. His footsteps echo ominously, far too loud for what should be a small space. Valerie can already feel the exhaustion setting in at the thought of clearing an entire tunnel complex.

"Yeah, I'm gonna guess this wasn't common knowledge then? Great. Why is it everywhere we go we discover some hidden plot or dark secret? Why no happy underground civilizations filled with fluffy bunnies?" he mutters. Valerie follows him down, shoving aside the body of a fallen raider and lowering the trap door down behind her. She joins Deacon at the foot of the steps, and together they creep through a suspiciously solid security gate and peer around the corner at the light flickering dimly down the hall.

"Holy fucktrucks." She breathes. "At least it isn't a creepy murder basement."

Deacon lets out a low whistle at her side, shakes his head.

"Might actually be better than bunnies."

They clear the entire complex before they stop to think about the implications of what they're splattering raider blood against. They sweep the place twice, drag all the bodies to the most remote closet they can find. Deacon ducks out to bar the trap door and returns to Valerie dragging a couple mattresses together into a corner of the main room, very pointedly not turning towards the shelving, though he can see her gaze flicker over her shoulder every second or two. He has to admire the effort if nothing else.

"Sooo." He leans against the wall by a towering shelf of canned peaches and crooks a smile at her. "What do you want for dinner?" Valerie springs to her feet with a Cheshire grin and throws her arms around his neck. Her back knocks the shelf against the wall with a clang as she pulls back. She threads her fingers through his and tows him into the center of the room, a definite bounce in her step.

"So, tomorrow we're going to have to be responsible adults and figure out what we're going to _do_ with all of this, and send a report to Des, and yadda yadda." She begins, gesturing with the air of a grifter trying for a particularly hard sell. Deacon quirks a skeptical eyebrow, though an indulgent smile is already fighting to take over.

"Tomorrow huh?"

"But tonight, I am actually fairly certain that we're the richest people in the commonwealth."

"I think you might be right."

"And we need to abuse it by eating ourselves sick. Really, really sick." She pauses expectantly, even flipping her sunglasses up to rest on top of her head so she can watch his response. He crosses his arms.

"Only if you let me build a fort out of that shelf of toilet paper."

Valerie whoops and pulls him down for a kiss before bolting for the dry goods shelving, laughing maniacally. Deacon grins and follows.

An hour later, he's doing his best to recreate what he thinks is called an 'igloo' out of toilet paper, stacking the rolls in rings held up by support pillars of Cram. Valerie returns from yet another foray into the stacks, dragging a sledge constructed from a pallet and a bit of rope, groaning under the weight of her latest treasures. She pulls it to a stop next to the small mountain she's formed with her previous trips and accidentally upsets a jar of maraschino cherries. Deacon watches it roll away under the grain storage.

"Okay, so I found _three shelves_ of Dandy Boy apples, and a bunch of something called quinoa that I've never had but I remember was supposed to be really good for you. I think it's like a wheat? God knows why the government thought that either of those things belong in a stockpile, but whatever." She turns the little sack over in her hands to squint at the label before shrugging and tossing it onto the pile. "How goes the igloo?"

"I don't think I have any future career paths in architecture." He muses, reaching out to adjust on of the slightly lumpy sides. "How the hell are you supposed to get a roof on these things?"

Valerie snorts. "Snow actually sticks together, unlike tissue. Maybe you could try it with papier-mâché? There's like a billion water bottles in one of the back rooms."

Deacon abandons his igloo to come investigate Mt. Rations. He bends, picking up a plastic bottle shaped like a plump, matronly woman. "What's this?"

"That, good sir, would be maple syrup. And tomorrow I am making you actual pancakes with actual grain that doesn't try to break your teeth for having the audacity to eat it." She wiggles the maple syrup at him emphatically. "Seriously though, you should go check this shit out. There's stuff in here I thought I'd never see again."

Deacon snickers, throwing an arm over her shoulder. "What, and spoil your fun playing show and tell?" Valerie rolls her eyes.

"You mean, 'What, and stop pissing around?'" She ducks out from under his shoulder, leaving him teetering from the sudden loss of his armrest, and scoops up a spare toilet paper roll from the floor to lob at his head as she turns back to the shelves. "Go back to your masterpiece, Frank Lloyd Wright."

Deacon is just putting the finishing touches on his painstakingly crafted roof when Valerie shrieks. He jumps, knocking the igloo over as he scrambles to draw his pistol.

"Deacon Deacon Deacon Deacon Deacon Deacon Deacon!"

Valerie bursts from the storage racks shouting and brandishing something shiny, skidding to a halt in front of him just before she would have bowled him over.

"Christ, Val, you gave me a heart attack!" He drags a hand down his face, holsters his gun with the others. "What the hell is that?"

Valerie doesn't look the least bit contrite, grinning ear to ear as she thrusts the tin she's holding under his nose. He has to go a bit cross eyed to make out the faded scripts, printed across the top in green.

_McCormick Freeze Dried Cilantro_

He laughs so hard he ends up on the floor, clutching his sides and completely squashing the remains of his fort.

**Author's Note:**

> Guys. Im soooooooo so sorry, but this story is gonna have to go on hiatus for the semester. I just tranferred into a four year college and I am absolutely getting my ass kicked. The amount of reading they give history majors should be illegal under the geneva conventions i swear to fuck. 
> 
> I promise though, 100%, this WILL be picked up again in the future, but today is not that day.


End file.
